Blue red and grey, The Who

Actually, this is Pete Townshed playing solo. But the song was part of Who By Numbers, by far the group's most depressing album. Two funny things - the song is anything but depressing, where Pete shows his love for life, and the other thing, as in this clip, on the original recording, Pete, the guitar smashing king of power chords and loudness, is playing a meek ukulele.

A gem, if you ask me.

MPB 4, Gabriela

Os Festivais da Record foram importantes na minha formação musical. Tive o privilégio de assisti-los quando estavam acontecendo. Deles participaram futuros gigantes da música popular brasileira, como Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Gilbert Gil, Gal Costa, MPB 4, etc etc.

Esta música é interessante por que foi a primeira vez que ouvi um frevo. Mais tarde, fui grande fã de frevo baiano, tocado com guitarras baianas. O arranjo desta música é bastante diferente, lógico. Em vez das estridentes guitarras baianas, orquestra. Porém a energia do frevo está todinha lá.

Dá para sentir um pouco o clima de energia do festival.

Piggybacking on other people's travels

When I was a child, I used to tack the atlas with me to be bathroom, and while handling my physiological needs, I dreamed of travelling the world.

As I grew, the atlas began to shrink. The realities of geopolitics, as well as my own physical shortcomings and utter desire to stay away from problem resulted in the removal of several destinations from my "place to visit" list.

Today I have actually been to quite a few countries, many of the ones I desired to visit in the first place, but my traveling stories lack the most exotic places. It seems I will depart the Earth before getting around to visit these places, for they lack the appeal, or I lack the courage to visit them.

I have actually met two people that visited Guinea-Bissau. One was an IMF analyst. When he went there, in the nineties, there was a single weekly flight coming from Europe. So he had to stay there what amounted to be a very long week. Even the people in government asked for toothpaste and toothbrushes, given the lack of such day-to-day articles in the poor country. The other, a pastor who had a ministry there. He actually brought videos, it did not seem so bad. However, it did not seem so good.

I had heard about Nigeria's woes. A resource rich country, with a vast population, several tribes with no connection with each other sharing land and power, in other words, a volcano ready to explode. A friend of mine went there on a business trip in the 90s. It turned out that he and a friend of his had fallen for a Section 419 scam, and he almost lost his life. His ambition almost killed him, for a I had forewarned.

A friend of mine went to Ecuador recently. A cousin of mine lived there for a while, as  a director of a multinational company. It does not seem so bad. However, my friend, who had his ticket paid by the relative of another friend, had severe diarrhea for weeks. And he ate the best places. Mind you, that guy can eat just about anything, in industrial quantities.

A semi-relative of mine has both the funds and courage to visit remote places. He has been to Antarctica, actually diving off the coast of the gelid continent, and has climbed the Annapurna - not the whole thing, he made it to about 6000 meters. One day I actually dreamed of making it up and down such places, however, the glamorous reality of climbing high mountains is very different from  the discomfort and possibility of frostbite and falling off a 2000 meter drop. As for his diving in the frigid waters of Antarctica, he says he got very close to death when one of the breathing apparatus failed. He was diving solo.

Then, there was a single person I know who went to North Korea. He was invited, I have no idea why, to perform as a magician in the reclusive country in the early 90's (he is a magician). His impression of the country was not that great, and I imagine he was being nice. I have no idea if he made any money from the North Korean "tour" and he whether he ate only rice and cabbage, as most North Koreans endure as meals every day.
 

No sir,  I will keeping on visiting the places on my shorter list...

Land of Make Believe, Moody Blues

This is a track from the Seventh Sojourn album. Again, I have to thank one of the record clubs I subscribed to at the time. This was an album of the month, I failed to reply I didn't want it and ended up keeping it. A decision  I would not regret.

There are more famous tracks in this album, but this is the one I really love. The arrangement, vocals, melody and lyrics are all wonderful. Michael Pinder's work on keyboards is monumental. Pinder was mostly known for his work with the Mellotron, a device created in the sixties, even before synthesizers, which actually replayed tracks for various instruments. It was basically used for strings, but also for choir and orchestra, with great effect. It was a hard instrument to play, especially live, for at times it would get stuck, or even fall apart. Rick Wakeman is said to have burned the three mellotrons he had, in frustration.

At any rate, for the longest time I thought Pinder was playing only Mellotrons in this record, but in this song it was most probably a Chamberlin, which emulated orchestral sounds better than the Mellotron. Very similar, yet, not the same.

Words, Missing Persons

Once upon a time, MTV was Music Television, a place where you watched videos. Eventually, it became a ~lifestyle~ channel. What lifestyle is that? A bunch of loser-behavior programming if you ask me.  Early 80's MTV rocked, I could not get enough of it. However, it does seem that segmented TV is a thing of the past. Speed, a channel originally created to broadcast car racing, will be phased out, just like MTV became a ~lifestyle~ channel.

As for Missing Persons...The video is excellent, the arrangement super. And the singer...not a beautiful woman by a stretch, but she conveyed the message. A Nina Hagen look alike, if you will.

The reality is that Lady Gaga, whom a lot of people consider a novelty, seems to have copied her look to a tee.

Enjoy

É a Massa, Trio Elétrico Dodo e Osmar

A qualidade do video é péssima. Provavelmente, uma filmagem de uma TV. Porém, a música realmente foi tocada ao vivo, por que a gravação é diferente. É de um disco de 1981 do Trio Elétrico Dodo e Osmar. Rapidíssima e super difícil de tocar, demonstra plenamente o gênio de Armandinho Macedo com o pequeno instrumento.

Apanhei-te Mini Moog

Originalmente uma faixa do disco "Mudança de Estação", da Cor do Som, depois regravado no disco Intuição, a música de Mú Carvalho continua a adquirir roupagens novas, agora mais unplugged.

O nome é um trocadilho da música "Apantei-te cavaquinho".

Live for Today, Sweet

Another song from Off the Record. Pure rock and roll. I don't quite agree with the lyrics, but be that as it may, rock lyrics to me are rather incidental to the song. Most of them are garbage anyway. However, the song is the record's most driven one, and even has the F word, at the time, a rather unusual occurrence.

A great hotel in Paris

Paris is known for some some good, and some crummy hotels. The Novotel Les Halles is a very good, yet not expensive hotel.

The strong point of the hotel, besides the excellent location, is the breakfast. I will tell you, it is very sumptuous. The variety and freshness of the items is awesome, and you can basically skip lunch if you want. I don't remember how much extra I paid for breakfast, but I think it was much less than you can spend on a simple coffee and tartine in a street side cafe.

By comparison, the breakfast at the Le Grand Hotel, where I also stayed during this trip, was a whopping 49 Euros A PERSON! Needless to say, I did not try it.

As for the Novotel Les Halles, it is located right in front of a subway station. The area is full of nice shops and restaurants, nearby museums, and very animated.

The rooms are not very large, but everything is very modern. You can expect to pay a little more than the crummy hotels I referred, but it is definitely worth it.



Reproduced from http://legaltranslationsystems.com/blog/blog3.php/2012/11/21/a-great-hotel-in-paris

Fever of Love, Sweet

I liked Sweet quite a bit, but I got the "Off the record" album from one of those record clubs, I didn't quite order it. I decided to keep the record.

There are some weird songs in this record, but they grown on you. Most of them have the typical Sweet high pitched harmonies, and little parts sang by bass player Steve Priest. I ended up liking this song a whole lot, and finding the video in Youtube has been a treat.

Uma surpresa ruinzinha do UMG

Pois bem. Outro dia, olhando no Youtube, achei uma música do Moraes Moreira que gostava muito, "Quem Nunca foi Um Menino". Tenho o álbum em vinil, porém nunca achei o CD. Aparentemente, o catálogo da BMG Ariola tem uma situação curiosa, por causa da falência da empresa, ou algo assim. Por isso, os CDs daquela época da carreira do Moraes nunca foram relançados.

Ia colocar um video aqui, pois a música realmente é legal. Fala de infância, etc, a letra e o arranjo são muito bons, de forma geral, o disco inteiro é ótimo, um dos melhores do Moraes Moreira.

Daí, busquei o vídeo, e nada. No google, achei um link, só que dá uma mensagem da UMG, que o vídeo não está disponível neste país (no meu caso, EUA)!!!

Pesquisei um pouco, e descobri que a UMG (Universal Music Group) fez algum tipo de acordo com o Youtube, bloqueando os tais vídeos. Suponho que no Vietnã seja possível ver o vídeo, mas não acho que o MM tenha muitos fãs lá...

Pelo menos achei o download (pago, nada de pirataria) na Uol, aparentemente a UMG se dignou a lançar um CD com esta música e algumas outras raras do MM. Porém, não lançou o Pintando o Oito inteiro, uma pena.

Uma vez perguntei ao próprio Moraes Moreira por que ele nunca tocava músicas do Pintando o Oito em seus shows. Ele riu e disse, "pois é". Faz muito tempo isso.

Se quiserem ouvir no Kboing, eis aqui o link http://www.kboing.com.br/musica-e-letra/moraes-moreira/1131439-quem-nunca-foi-um-menino/

Close to the Edge, 1975

In this version, Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz practically destroys the song. Instruments seem out of tune (old synthesizers could go out of tune), settings are wrong, the mixing does not help. He is not a bad musician, in fact, great. But he seemed out of place in Yes, and seemed a tad put off playing other people's music.

He ended up playing for Moody Blues, where he stayed a while, until being fired by the band, whom he sued later.

Close to the Edge, Amsterdam

This is a great rendition of Close to the Edge, with symphonic orchestra and all. The keyboard player does an awesome job, in fact, plays the song better than even Rick Wakeman.

Compare to the rendition by Patrick Moraz, which I will post sometime later.